The World

The Soviet Union's long-serving minister for foreign trade, Nikolai S. Patolichev, was replaced in the latest of a series of top personnel changes since Mikhail S. Gorbachev took over the leadership last March. The Tass news agency said Patolichev, 77, had retired for health reasons and been replaced by Boris I. Aristov, one of his deputies. Aristov, 60, was a former Leningrad city Communist Party boss and had served as ambassador to Poland in the early 1980s. Patolichev was the 13th minister to leave in Gorbachev's drive to replace elderly officials.